momagri, movement for a world agricultural organization, is a think tank chaired by Christian Pèes.It brings together, managers from the agricultural world and important people from external perspectives, such as health, development, strategy and defense. Its objective is to promote regulationof agricultural markets by creating new evaluation tools, such as economic models and indicators,and by drawing up proposals for an agricultural and international food policy.

G20 agriculture: one more effort

May 18, 2015

85% of world agricultural production and 75% of world agricultural trade are delivered by the G20 countries. Based on this fact, thirteen G20 ministers of agriculture met on 7th and 8th May for a meeting in Istanbul, 4 years after the agricultural G20 Paris, the main focus being the implementation of effective strategies in the name of food security.

Topics included: agro-ecology and the need to pursue research and innovation, the fight against waste and food losses (specific challenges for G20 member countries) but also the development of instruments initiated by the G20 agriculture in 2011. Consequently, in 2014, the Med-Amin network1 (Agricultural Market Information Network) was born, an information system for Mediterranean markets connected to the G20’s AMIS (Agricultural Market Information System) aimed in particular at sharing information in the fight against agricultural market price volatility; as well as the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM), a result of G8 and G20 discussions on food security, which aims at “identifying, assessing and measuring agricultural risks and developing strategies to address them”.

However, while the 2011 agricultural G20 promised to become an incubator for proposals of new global agricultural governance, the bearer of transparency and new regulatory practices in world agricultural markets, the 2015 agricultural G20 is much less ambitious in its initiatives. Certainly the G20 promises to continue the use of AMIS and the rapid reaction forum and has agreed to the defining of an action plan on food security and sustainable food systems to be presented at the Antalya Summit in November 2015; but at the same time it is promoting the pursuit of trade liberalization under the Doha Round, despite successive failures of the rounds of negotiations that have too often struggled with topics as strategic and specific as agriculture and food security.

Recognition by much of the international community of the weight of exogenous and endogenous risks on agriculture and global food security was a major achievement, but it is urgent to go further. Free trade and regulation are not mutually exclusive especially for agriculture and food security. Agriculture and food security cannot therefore be considered either as an adjustment variable or as a front for protectionism, but as a Global Public Good.